Jenna Blum has long immersed her readers in the struggles of fictional characters wrestling with agonizing challenges to the human heart; from a New York Holocaust survivor who can’t escape the ghosts he left behind to a sister tracking tornadoes to find her long-lost brother.
In her latest, Woodrow on the Bench: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog, Blum turns her lens on a nonfictional character, herself, including the anguish she suffered and the life lessons she learned during the aging and death of her beloved Labrador retriever.
Blum will be in conversation with Laurie Gelman. Long before she ever considered becoming a writer, Gelman was already unknowingly gathering material as she navigated the cutthroat terrain of school parent politics. So, when she emerged as an author at the age of 52, it was hardly surprising that she turned her sardonic, irreverent and thoroughly acerbic wit on the jealousy, backbiting and impossible expectations of PTA parents, first in Class Mom and then in You’ve Been Volunteered.
Now, in Yoga Pant Nation, Gelman is back turning the indignities of modern parenting into laugh-out-loud fiction as her class mom takes on the William Taft Elementary School WeFUKCT (We Fundraise Until Kingdom Come Team) in a quest to raise $10,000 for her granddaughter’s fifth grade class.
Jenna Blum is the author of the New York Times bestseller Those Who Save Us, as well as The Stormchasers and The Lost Family.
More About Women on the Move: A Virtual Series
Temple Emanu-El’s Stettenheim Library is proud to present its fourth edition of Women on the Move, a series that welcomes female authors to discuss their latest work probing the intricacies of our lives.
The series will be moderated by Zibby Owens, writer and creator of the popular podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, one of O: The Oprah Magazine’s favorite book podcasts; journalist Jordana Horn, co-host of the Call Your Mother podcast and contributing editor at Kveller; and Marjorie Shuster, Coordinator of Literary Events at Temple Emanu-El.
Sponsored by The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Authors’ Series, honoring Theodore and Caroline Newhouse and Susan Newhouse